New Look

I've changed around the color scheme here on the blog to match my main site, and added a FriendFeed widget. I've been trying to use FriendFeed a bit more lately, instead of just randomly sending my tweets/pictures/etc. there without thinking about it. It will be interesting to see what the recent Facebook acquisition will do to the tool.

Also, yes, I have other things I am supposed to be doing, and yes, I should stop procrastinating and get back to them.

PSA: Making Up Emails

Public Service Announcement: When you use a fake email to create an account somewhere, you are running the risk that a) you'll forget your password and won't be able to retrieve it and b) that email exists already and the person who owns it might just try to create an account on the same site.

I just had a curious experience when I went to use an online service that I couldn't recall using before, only to find an account for my email already existed. Thinking maybe I'd signed up and forgotten, I requested a password reset, and then logged in and took a look at the profile. Hmmm, yeah, that isn't me.

Now I have access to someone else's profile, and without deliberate malice, I have changed their password so that they can't get back in to the account. The organization uses the email address as a gateway, and if the original creator tries to re-reset their password... the link will go to my email, and they won't be able to follow up.

So that leaves me wondering what I ought to do now. Change the profile info and proceed? Create a new profile with a different email address (not what I'd choose, I use this specific address for a lot of web services and I prefer to keep them all together)? Post a doofy picture and leave strange messages for this person's in-service contacts? At any rate, take a lesson from this unfortunate person, and if you don't want to be bothered with spam, create a separate email for service accounts and never bother to check it, rather than entering a random address and hoping for the best.

International Year of Natural Fibers

Did YOU know 2009 was the International Year of Natural Fibers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations?

Me either.

Hat tip to Green Planet Yarns.

Just a Tease

What am I up to this afternoon? Just a little experiment. Which may or may not have anything to do with Murphy-Goode Winery. I've never used my camera to take video before. I think it works pretty well, except that I have NO battery life. Get it in one take, or else, I guess.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the Society Garlic plants I was sitting in DO start to smell like garlic after they've been crushed.



No, the video doesn't actually show anything. Yes, I am amused by it for some reason. That is all.

More SXSW bits

My plan for today is sorting and filing some very very old paperwork while listening to some of the SXSW Interactive podcasts for panels that I missed. Should be a very constructive way to multitask.

Speaking of SXSW, artist Mike Rohde has posted the "sketch notes" he put together at the conference this year - you can find them on his Flickr. I am quite interested in these, because back when I took notes by hand in undergrad, I used to format them in a similar sort of way, bolding important concepts and organizing things in sections or bubbles. Unfortunately, my handwriting was not nearly so attractive or tidy as Mike's, and no one else would have found them legible, much less interesting.

Reflections on SXSW Interactive 2009

I took, no exaggeration, 44 pages of notes from the panels at SXSW Interactive conference in Austin this year. This was in large part due to the high quality and relevance of the sessions I was able to attend. This was one of the best SXSWi for me so far, from a panel perspective. From a social perspective, it's hard for a conference that has grown so much to have the same ease and opportunity for making personal connections as it once did; especially for those like me who are more comfortable in a small group than in a massive crowd. But the opportunities are still there if you made the effort to look for them.

It is the energy I was able to catch from the conference this year that was the very best thing about it. A lot of people there were struggling with the same issues I am - to wit, how to stay motivated and proactive when the economic and regulatory climates seem so dire. However, I came away refreshed, hopeful, invigorated. I have some new projects in the planning stages, some of which you'll see evidence of here on the blog very soon.

Highlights of the conference included several panels dealing with audience management and crowd sourcing, a full day of panels surrounding issues of copyright and fair use, and two extremely helpful panels about changing jobs in the current economy. Overall, I thought the panels were well selected and scheduled; in the past there have been several time slots where I wanted to be in four places at once and others where I was interested in nothing; this year there was only one session slot in which I found myself free, and I used it to visit the trade show floor.

In addition, I saw a number of great folks I usually only see once a year in Austin, and as usual, met some great new people who turn out to live practically in my backyard. SXSW Interactive 2009 was a great conference for me, and I feel lucky to have been able to attend.

And if anyone has insomnia or a vast amount of time on their hands, I'd be happy to share my panel notes. Just shoot me an email.

Blogging/Conference Update

No blogging of conference content has happened because the Marriott Courtyard didn't quite anticipate that having a crowd in for an internet conference just might mean a lot of their guests would intend to spend time, well, on the internet. So their system has been fubar'd since our arrival. The only internet I have is in the conference center itself - and then I'm usually in a panel. I'm taking good notes, and I'll post some impressions sometime soon, but it's possible that won't happen until I return!

Best panels so far:
Collaborative Filters: Evolution of Recommendation Engines
and
Kicking Ass with Controlled Metadata

Upcoming: SXSWi

This week I sat down and took a really good look at my calendar for March. For a girl whose time has been pretty unstructured lately, March is FULL.

Perhaps most important is my trek to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. I've been going to this conference since 2002 - it's changed quite a bit in that time, from an intimate, transplanted-SF feel to a full-sized widely recognized conference for web and software technology professionals. (Note that I am speaking specifically of the Interactive portion of the conference - the Music and Film portions have been widely recognized and attended for much longer than that!)

I spent some time going over the conference schedule today. Below is my tentative game plan. Items in parentheses are alternate panels that I may attend as crowds and whim of the moment dictate. In general, I thought that the scheduling of panels was far more balanced than it's been in years previous - kudos to the planning team!

I'm posting this partly for my own reference, as evidenced by the room numbers next to the panel names. I also intend to be better about blogging my impressions about the various panels than I have been in previous years. We'll see how that goes.

FRIDAY
2pm
User Generated Content: State of the Union - C
(Core Conversation: the Conference Networking Catalyst - 19B)
3:30
The Ecosystem of News - 12AB
4:30
Book Reading: Career Renegade: How to make a great living doing what you love - Day Stage
5
Screenburn: That Doesn't Suck! (Spore) - C

SATURDAY
10am
Civic Technologies and the Future of the Internet - 9
11:30
Curating the Crowd-Sourced World - C
(Not the Same Old Story - Hilton C)
2pm
?
3:30
Kicking Ass with Controlled Metadata - 8
(Connecting Interrelated Design & Dev Workflows - 10)
5
Collaborative Filters: Evolution of Recommendation Engines - B
(Building a Bridge with Barcodes - the QR Code Invasion - Hilton A)

SUNDAY
10am
Version Control: No more save as... - Hilton B
11:30
Design for the Wisdom of Crowds - A
(EA Dead Space: A Deep Media Case Study - 6)
2pm
CSS3: What's Now, What's New, and What's Not? - 6
3:30
What Do I Do... Economy Collapsed? - 9
(Post Standards: Creating Open Source Specs - Hilton C)
5
How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution - 8

MONDAY
10am
The Invisible Web and Ubiquitous Computing - 9
(Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures - Hilton C)
11:30
Ultimate Showdown of Content Management System Destiny - Hilton B
(The Future of the DVD and Digital Distribution - 12AB)
(What Can We Learn From Games - A)
2pm
Keynote: Virginia Heffernan / James Powderly Interview - A
3:30
Using the New Digital Social Media to Accelerate Sustainability - 8
(You're Living in Your Own Private Branded Entertainment Experience - 6)
5
"You May Also Be Interested in..." - 9
(Evolving Digital Technologies and Profitable Green Building - 8)
(Girl Gaming Goes Mainstream: Cliches, Reality, and Community - 12AB)

TUESDAY
10am
New Threats to New Media: Fair Use On Trial - Hilton B
(Rethinking the Digital Prototype - 6)
11:30
Online Content: Transforming Piracy Into Profit - Hilton B
2pm
Tuesday Keynote: Chris Anderson / Guy Kawasaki Conversation - A
3:30
Policy Trainwreck: How Copyright Law Failed the Digital Age - Hilton B
5
Are Virtual Worlds a Refuge from the Recession? - 5C

Jessajune.com

I've launched the redesign of the long-neglected JessaJune.com this morning. Enjoy!

Twitter Advice

From Ari, via Twitter: How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR

Why yes, I am posting this solely to improve its Google ranking, in the desperate hopes that Marketing and PR firms will see it.

(I am not saying Twitter cannot be used for customer outreach - check out SFBART for a great example of this. But Twitter is more for getting information out and improving the experience of people who are already your customers, not for driving up new business from strangers. I restricted my Twitter feed because I got tired of being followed by people trying to hawk businesses and services, who mistakenly thought that following ME was going to get me to follow THEM and their advertising messages, instead of just showing their ignorance and making me think worse of them. Figure out how the technology works before you start using it - otherwise you're just a spammer. And on Twitter, you're a failed spammer, at that.)

Personal Websites

Hmm, this post from Zeldman is a perfect echo of what I've been thinking, both while redesigning my website (no, it's not finished/visible yet) and musing on the overwhelming number of web channels we possess.

Or perhaps I should say that my thoughts echo what Zeldman was thinking almost a year ago.

I may be late to his particular party, but I'm certainly not the only one. As I've been scouting other people's sites I've been feeling like everyone is still putting their blog front and center. I've chosen not to, and this makes me feel better about it. Almost as if I knew where things were going.

Most of my links will point OUT, to web apps, sites, and projects that I'm involved with. That's the nature of the web these days. My site will only be a collection point. Whether or not I feel comfortable being scattered all over the internet, that's how it IS. And I think it's right for the site to reflect that.

Too many channels?

In the car last night, I was composing a blog post in my head about the gorgeous sunset and fog-rainbow that I experienced last night driving over the Santa Cruz mountains. The mood was somewhat jarred by the fact that there was a car on FIRE at the summit - not smoke, actual flames.

And when I got home, instead of blogging about it, I updated my Facebook status.

Instead of blogging my concern about California's water situation and the wish for rain, and my disappointment when it fails to come and my happiness that we're finally getting some this week - that all went into my Twitter and Facebook statuses too.

The only thing I've been using the blog for with any real consistency is for my knitting projects. And then I joined Ravelry. I find I'm using my project notes sections on Ravelry like a mini blog! For example, here is part of my project page for my Calorimetry:

(Click for a bigger image.) You'll see that I made some notes when I started the project, and then made dated updates as I knit the pattern. Excerpt follows:

I’ve been meaning to make one of these for a while. Shockingly, I did the full gauge swatch as indicated and am exactly on. I actually would prefer to be a bit under, so I’m going down a needle size...

Jan 16
Done, except for finding a button for a fastener. I actually went down 2 needle sizes, and while the length ended up right, it’s wider than I’d like. I think I’ll leave it, though - it definitely fits, it’s just more hatlike than I’d anticipated. At some point, I’ll probably knit another and eliminate some of the rows for a more headband-ish look.

Jan 19
Buttons purchased & sewn on. The wood matches just the way I thought it would. Pity the weather is so warm, I have no cause to wear this for now…

There is the relevant information, targeted to those specifically interested (any member of Ravelry who is interested in me, the yarn involved, or the pattern can find this page). And it's not on my blog. Because face it, not very many of my friends knit (and those who do, I encourage to join Ravelry!), and therefore are most likely not interested in the minutia of how I created a given project. They might be interested in the pictures, but those can be found on Flickr.

I can't decide if this is a good thing. My blog is starting to feel a bit obsolete. Reserved for only the things not targeted to a specific (knitting) audience or more than 140 characters long, I find I am not often drawn to make entries.

I find myself wondering if engaging in all the various social media outlets, we are spreading ourselves too thin? I certainly feel like my blogging efforts in this incarnation are nothing like what I was creating in 2001. Part of that is maturity, both of personality and internet savvy, but some of it was that blogging was the only way I had to communicate with the internet world. Now I am flooded with options, and it feels like there are too many channels available to do all of them justice.

Why am I doing this with my time?

You Scored as Ravenclaw

From Harry Potter Sorting Hat Quiz at Quiz Farm

(Pity the image doesn't work. Harrumph. Here, I shall yoink the one from sortinghat.com even though their quiz is lame:



I'm a Ravenclaw!

Actually I know why I'm doing this - I'm still thinking about knitting myself another HP scarf, this time for Ravenclaw. What? I have a master's degree in Library Science. Can YOU think of anything more Ravenclaw than that?

Ravelry

This may be the cutest knitting pattern I have ever seen: Snails and Slugs

I found it via Ravelry - I requested & received an invite to the knit/crochet community ages ago, but chickened out of actually logging into the site. I was worried a) that it would be a huge time-suck (it is) and more importantly b) that I would be completely intimidated. Let's face it, I may have been knitting for a long time, but I do it very casually and I'm neither fast nor a maker of complicated items.

However, some people I know recently joined and started playing around, and I figured I might still be intimidated, but at least I wouldn't be lonely.

It turns out to be very interesting, and there's lots to do and see. The temptation to sort through my stash and catalog every. single. yarn. to the site... is kind of strong. So far, I am resisting.

(Oh, and for those curious, I found my camera cable. Yay!)

Holiday linkage

Yarn Harlot spends some time musing on knitting gifts.

This is the cutest thing I've seen in quite some time: balaclavas for your keys.

A Christmas pinata is the best idea evar.

(some of these links via Not Martha)

Blogkeeping

It's like housekeeping, only online. I've taken down some of the linkage and whatnot in the sidebar, and added a Flying Spaghetti Monster banner (motivated by this story, because seriously, how awesome is that? hat tip to Ari) and a master map of all my tags. It's an enormous list, which meant that then I had to go back and re-sort things to remove a lot of the one-offs. I didn't start with a plan, I just kind of made them up as I went, and you could tell. All the onesies should be gone now except for Music and Theater, and I'm keeping those because I want more music and theater in my life. If I succeed in that, I'll have more posts under those categories.

(Oh and Creepie Crawlies is still there because I love it as a tag name. So, uh, yeah. Maybe I'll post about that salamander E and I found a while back. It belongs under CC for sure. )

Yes, I AM supposed to be writing a paper. Why do you ask?

Reflecting on the Day

I have to say, this is how I felt most days, in my old job.

I love Garfield Minus Garfield.

SXSW-school-knitting update

No, I haven't registered for SXSWi yet. Yes, I probably should.

It's so hard to know at this point what I'm going to be doing next March... what with graduating in December and all. (knocks on wood)

Today I've been updating the resume for an internship search, finding actual posts to apply for, and (shock) knitting. I haven't finished either of the projects I blogged in July, but I started something new today. An honest-to-goodness lace pattern called Branching Out.

I'll wait to post a picture until I get a bit farther, just in case posting "starting out" pictures is some sort of curse which causes me not to finish.

DRM funtime

This, THIS is why I still buy my music on CD. Seriously, people.

This week, Yahoo Music e-mailed customers who purchased music from their site and let them know that as of September 30, 2008, Yahoo Music will go dark.

And they will take the DRM key servers down with it.

That means that anyone who legally purchased tunes through Yahoo Music will lose the right to transfer that music to other devices or computers, even though they paid for that right.

Sucks to be you if you choose a service, put down your money, and then something happens to the service.

Feeds and 'Casts

Today has been new media day - I've subscribed to several podcasts (mostly of the crafting variety) and added feeds for several new blogs (from some of the ladies featured in the 50 Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers article that Christine pointed to via Twitter).

The podcasts I'm listening to while crafting - a great way to multi-task in my current television-and-Netflix-impaired world. The feeds... we'll see how I like the new sites and whether I'll keep them. I like the idea of following more sites, but the LISNews feed is SO busy, it makes it hard to keep up as it is.

I've thought about dropping LISNews, but it's so useful for keeping up with what's going on in the library world - if I could subscribe to a "half-feed" sampling, I totally would. But I can't, so I just have to resign myself to occasionally marking the backlog as read without getting to them. It is painful, but less painful than looking at 50+ unread posts.